Bird flu: Don't blame wild birds
2008-01-24 08:08
Bangkok - There is no solid evidence that
wild birds are to blame for the apparent spread of the H5N1
virus from Asia to parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East,
an animal disease expert said on Wednesday.
There was also no proof that wild birds were a reservoir
for the H5N1 virus, Scott Newman, international wildlife
co-ordinator for avian influenza at the UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation, said at a bird flu conference in
Bangkok.
After H5N1 was found in 2005 in a huge lake in central
China where it killed over 10 ,000 wild birds, it turned up in parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, leading some
experts to believe migratory birds may be to blame.
But Newman said there was no good reason for thinking so.
"We know that some wild birds have probably moved short distances carrying viruses and then they died, but we have not
been able to identify carriage of H5N1 across large scale
spatial distances and then resulting in spread to other birds
and mortality in poultry flocks," Newman told Reuters.
He said faecal tests on some 350 000 healthy birds worldwide
had to date only yielded "a few" positive H5N1 results.
Furthermore, in instances and places where wild birds were
found with the disease, there were no concurrent outbreaks of
the virus in poultry.
"So we don't have at this point in time a wildlife
reservoir for H5N1 ... so they can't be a main spreader of the
disease," Newman said.
He stressed the need to focus attention on the poultry
trade, and particularly smuggling, adding that these factors
may instead be spreading and sustaining the deadly disease.
"We recognise that poultry production, trade, both legal
and illegal, and other bio-security issues are probably more
important as far as being a mechanism that promotes the
sustaining and spread of H5N1," he said.
Experts have warned for years that a flu pandemic was long
overdue and they stressed at the three-day Bangkok conference
that the H5N1 bird flu virus remained a key candidate.
The virus has killed millions of chickens and ducks and
despite the slaughter of millions more and vaccination
campaigns, it remains entrenched in many poultry populations.
Although the virus has infected only 351 people around the
world since 2003, it has killed 219 of them, according to the
World Health Organisation.